Pssst! You! Yeah, you... are a passenger on a planet... on a blue-green planet that's orbiting a golden star. And right now we are traveling through a place in our yearly orbit that marks an event that happened in May of 1976 in Polynesia, where the natives were restless. A native Hawaiian artist named Herb Kane was tired of Western scientists, historians and educators claiming that open ocean could not be navigated without Western technology and that Hawaii was accidentally discovered by Polynesian fisherman who stumbled onto these islands when they drifted off course. Those making this claim for 200 years were the descendents of Europeans who had spread out all over the world, infecting native people with shame about their dancing, shame about their singing and shame about the naked bodies with which they were born into this world.

Herb Kane was so tired of this claim that in 1973 he teamed up with Ben Finney and Tommy Holmes to form the Polynesian Voyaging Society to prove it wrong. Since then the Society has succeeded in constructing canoes in the old style and in reviving the lost science of navigating by non-Western, nature-based methods. The Society's inaugural voyage was May 1st, 1976, when the now-famous Hokulea canoe departed Hawaii for Tahiti. On June 4 of that year Hokulea arrived safe and sound at her destination.

Years later, we now know that Polynesians navigate with input from stars, driftwood, clouds, seaweed, winds, birds, weather, the smell, taste and temperature of the ocean, ripple patterns on the sea surface, the sense of smell of an on-board pig - and the navigator's testicles. This is because of ocean swells. Swells are below the surface waves and they must be tracked in order to steer a proper course. Each swell has a distinctive vibratory pattern, which the navigator monitors with his testicles. To facilitate this, the canoe has a tiny canoe on the side of it that's like the side car on a motor cycle. This tiny canoe's floor is thinner, and this is where the navigator sits, cross-legged and without interference from clothing, feeling for the swells.

Now, as we mark the anniversary of Hokulea's inaugural voyage, we celebrate native Polynesians who feel honor - not shame - about their bodies. Their bodies are like antennae that connect them with their environment in ways that are inconceivable to Westerners whose antennae are mangled by unnatural attitudes and beliefs.

Our word, native, is similar to nativity, meaning birth. Native means, "to be born in kinship with." Thanks to natives who got restless and thanks to the Polynesian Voyaging Society, the kinship with life has triumphed over unnatural and limiting beliefs.

These days, when just being alive means that we're navigating uncharted waters, I'm grateful that my body is the product of millions of years of evolutionary fine-tuning on this blue-green planet. My body is my kinship with life - and my radar antennae.

This is Harriet Witt, your guide for this little ride on our passenger planet.


If you have any questions, drop Harriet an email: harriet@passengerplanet.com


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